In order to carry out her mission, Maryam traveled overland for nearly twenty hours straight to reach her target. Her parents claimed to have seen her in Dagestan as late as March 28, the day before the attack. Maryam was such an unlikely bomber that Russian authorities initially stated that the second Moscow bomber was Maria Ustarkhanova, another Dagestani widow of a jihadi fighter. Only when Maryam's father, Magomed-Rasul, recognized the red headscarf she was wearing did Russian authorities change their story. Magomed-Rasul called the authorities after pictures of the bombers were posted on the Internet; Maryam's friends and family had recognized her instantly. He later officially identified his daughter from three photos of her detached head.5
The only girl in a family of boys, Maryam was modest and reserved, an ardent Muslim but not radical in her views.6 She grew up in a small, steel-gated house in Balakhani, a little hillside village with no running water or electricity, typical of Dagestan. Her house was a traditional Avar two-storied home, with low ceilings, spacious rooms, and a small courtyard. Balakhani is sandwiched between bare cliffs overgrown with pines and encircled by orchards that in the spring are cloaked in white apricot blossoms. Magomed-Rasul claimed that his daughter left home on the afternoon of March 28 to visit a girlfriend and never returned.
What her parents didn't know is that Maryam had secretly married a thirty-five-year-old jihadi, Magomedali Vagapov, the leader of the rebel Gubden Jamaat group, which had trained in Pakistan and had been fighting Russian government forces since the 1990s. Vagapov reported directly to Dokka Umarov, the top Chechen rebel, who officially took responsibility for the subway bombings. Once Vagapov grew tired of Maryam (he had two other wives), he persuaded her to become a suicide bomber.
Contrary to Islamic tradition, in which the individual must settle accounts before an act of martyrdom, Maryam did not leave a note or a will, and did not organize her worldly affairs before the operation. This has raised questions about whether she intended to be a bomber or knew that the operation in Moscow would end her life. Al Jazeera reported that she had no history of extremism, although both of her brothers had previously been involved with the Chechen resistance.
The younger one, Ilyas, was detained in 2008 for his connection to insurgent fighters operating out of the North Caucasus.7 Her older brother, Anvar, had a more complicated past. He had ties to a radical Islamist group from the fortified village of Gimry (founded by Gazimagomed Magomedov, a fellow native of Balakhani) and several of his friends were killed in guerrilla operations while others were on the run. On the one hand, Anvar fought in the first Chechen war, was in the Dagestani underground, and headed the list of believers in the Wahhabite ideology on the police rolls for 2005. He was amnestied in 2006, however, because there was no blood on his hands. He then moved to Moscow, got married, and started a new life, until his sister's explosion at the Lubyanka station.
Maryam's parents remain skeptical that their only daughter would wed in secret. Her father said, “Maryam would never marry without my permission.”8 She was always either at home or at school; there was no opportunity for her to be with her husband. Furthermore, they rebuff the suggestion made by the Russian authorities that Maryam's older brother, Anvar, had helped coordinate the attacks and drove the two women to the subway.
For a long time after the attacks, no journalists, either Russian or foreign, were permitted into Balakhani to investigate or check the official story disseminated by the FSB.9 One particularly intrepid reporter, Irina Gordienko, managed to get past the checkpoints and interview Maryam's family; she also conducted phone interviews with Anvar. According to Gordienko, Maryam's mother, Patimat, asked in disbelief, “How can they say that my oldest son, Anvar, himself took his sister to the site of the act of terrorism? After these events he could not even talk with me; tears were choking him. I keep constant contact with him and to this day he does not believe that Maryam is gone. I am afraid for my son. What will come of him now?”10
Because Maryam's brothers are suspected of having aided and abetted the female terrorist suicide bombers, both are on the federal fugitive list. Both have disappeared.
The Moscow attacks killed 40 people and injured an additional 160. It was the deadliest incident in Moscow since female suicide bombers brought down two planes and attacked the subway in 2004. In May 2010, when the FSB tried to apprehend the men who had escorted Djennet and Maryam to the metro stations, they resisted arrest and were shot and killed. The FSB refused to disclose their names.11 According to Russian sources, one of the three men killed was Akhmed Rabadanov, grandson of Atsi Muhammed, the local sheikh in Novyy Kostek, Dagestan.
The bombings in the Moscow subway follow a pattern that was established years earlier when Chechen militants first targeted it in 2004. Attacking infrastructure during the workday rush hour is an alarming trend that has spread wherever suicide bombers proliferate. Attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004 (exactly 911 days after 9/11), as well as the multiple bombings on July 7, 2005, against London's underground have become the hallmarks of groups affiliated with Al Qaeda. By killing many civilians who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, terrorist organizations instill fear, panic, and a sense that the government is helpless to protect them. This is a trend that shows no signs of imminent decline.
1
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TERROR AND THE LOGIC OF OPPRESSION
The only position for women in the [movement] is prone.—Stokely Carmichael, Black Panther leader, 19641
Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more. —Ulrike Meinhof, female leader of the German Red Army Faction, May 19682
ASSASSINS,. THEN AND NOW
There is a long history of using violence to inspire terror. Historically, all the major religions—Muslim (Shi'a and Sunni), Christian, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish—have employed terrorist violence, in many regions of the world. As far back as the Old Testament, Samson brought down the temple of the Philistines, killing those inside and himself in the process. Members of various early Christian, Muslim, and Jewish heretical sects were willing to sacrifice their lives for their beliefs, and occasionally sacrificed the lives of others as well. These groups used violence to frighten their enemies and to instill terror among the population with varying degrees of efficacy. The early groups, although inspired by religious fervor, were differentiated by their fundamental goals. Some hoped to expel a foreign occupier; others engaged in violence to celebrate their dedication to a cause, an idea, or a particular leader. The (Hindu) Thugs, (Muslim) Assassins, and (Jewish) Zealots all used terror and were principally motivated by religion.3
Much of what inspires religious terrorism today is reflected in the history of these early organizations. The early terrorists' desire for publicity, their indoctrination of children, their targeting of foreign occupiers, and attacks against collaborators are all surprisingly similar to the tactics used today in Israel, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis has written about the activities of the twelfth-century Nizari, an Ismaili Islamic sect more commonly known as the Assassins. The word assassin, which is still used today to describe a politically motivated murderer, can be traced to the Arabic word hashishiyyin, because the Nizari reputedly smoked hashish before engaging in acts of terror. Their primary goal was to purify Islam. They inflicted relatively few casualties, although in their heyday they posed a serious threat to the governments of the Seljuk Empire in Persia and the Levant. The account written by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century describes what many present-day Islamic suicide bombers think will be their ultimate heavenly reward. Speaking of the Assassin chief, Polo wrote,
The King had caused a certain valley between two mountains to be enclosed, and had turned it into a garden,